The Large Gender Gap in Doctoral Awards in Specific Academic Disciplines

Last week, a WIAReport post showed that the number of doctorate degrees awarded to women at U.S. universities had shown a slight drop from previous years. But the overall numbers hide a continuing wide gender gap in many specific disciplines.

The National Science Foundation recently released its annual data on doctoral degree recipients in the United States. Data for the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates shows that while women have generally closed the gender gap in doctoral degree awards, there are a number of specific disciplines where women continue to lag men in earned doctorates by a substantial margin.

Here are some of the academic fields in 2017 where women earned less than one third of all doctorates awarded:

• Plasma, high-temperature physics, 11.1%
• Robotic, 12.4%
• Geometry, 12.5%
• Systems engineering, 16.8%
• Aerospace engineering, 18.0%
• Condensed matter, low-temperature physics, 18.3%
• Nuclear engineering, 18.6%
• Acoustics, 19.6%
• Computer science, 20.0%
• Nuclear physics, 20.7%
• Atomic physics, 21.1%
• Logic, 22.6%
• Structural engineering, 24.0%
• Theology, 24.3%
• Computational mathematics, 24.5%
• Theoretical chemistry, 25.0%
• Astrophysics, 25.0%
• Biophysics, 25.3%
• Elementary particle physics, 25.3%
• Algebra, 25.6%
• Music theory, 26.1%
• Atmospheric physics, 26.7%
• Finance, 28.1%
• Number theory, 28.3%
• Bioinformatics, 28.5%
• Paleontology, 30.0%
• Applied mathematics, 30.4%
• Organic chemistry, 30.5%
• Chemical engineering, 32.2%
• Agricultural economics, 32.5%
• Medicinal chemistry, 33.0%

In contrast, there are a number of academic fields where women earned at least three quarters of all doctoral degree awards in 2016. Some examples include:

• Community psychology, 91.2%
• Nursing science, 88.0%
• Developmental, child psychology, 86.4%
• Speech-language pathology and audiology, 85.3%
• Behavioral analysis, 81.5%
• International education, 80.4%
• Marriage and family therapy, 80.2%
• Educational psychology, 79.6%
• Literacy and reading, 79.5%
• Special education, 79.4%
• Social work, 78.8%
• Art history, 77.6%
• Counseling education, 77.3%
• French, 77.0%
• Family and consumer science, 76.9%
• Anthropology, physical and biological, 75.7%
• Clinical psychology, 75.6%